Not, like his great Compeers, indignantly Doth DANUBE spring to life![490] The wandering Stream (Who loves the Cross, yet to the Crescent's gleam Unfolds a willing breast)[HH] with infant glee Slips from his prison walls: and Fancy, free 5 To follow in his track of silver light, Mounts on rapt wing, and with a moment's flight Hath reached the encincture of that gloomy sea[491][HI] Whose waves the Orphean lyre[HJ] forbad to meet In conflict; whose rough winds forgot their jars[492] 10 To waft the heroic progeny of Greece; When the first Ship sailed for the Golden Fleece-- ARGO--exalted for that daring feat To fix in heaven her shape distinct with stars.[493][HK] _Not (like his great Compeers) indignantly Doth Danube spring to light!_ Before this quarter of the Black Forest was inhabited, the source of the Danube might have suggested some of those sublime images which Armstrong has so finely described; at present the contrast is most striking. The Spring appears in a capacious Stone Basin upon the front of a Ducal palace, with a pleasure-ground opposite; then, passing under the pavement, takes the form of a little, clear, bright, black, vigorous rill, barely wide enough to tempt the agility of a child five years old to leap over it,--and, entering the Garden, it joins, after a course of a few hundred yards, a Stream much more considerable than itself. The _copiousness_ of the Spring at _Doneschingen_ must have procured for it the honour of being named the Source of the Danube.--W. W. 1822. "Monday, 31st July.--... We drew towards the town of Villingen, a foreign-looking place standing in the descent, and lifting up its metallic dome-like spires, without the accompaniment of a single tree.... The Church with its two-fold spire glittered in the hot sunshine, like pewter in a melting state. Our guide had told us that near this place the Danube took its rise; but not so.... At _Doneschingen_ changed horses again. _Here_ we laved in the water which flowed from the source of the majestic Danube, a little, clear, bright, black rill, that issuing from a capacious stone fountain, into which it springs, crosses the road, and glides rapidly along the side of a beautiful pleasure-ground.... We washed, drank, and luxuriated in the cool and pure waters of this rill, unwilling to quit what we were not again to see--a reality very different from the stately Danube, so long an image to the imagination." (Mrs. Wordsworth's Journal.) "Tuesday, 1st August. Villingen.--The landlord seemed to entertain high ideas of this his native place--its modern improvements in gardens and its former grandeur--and told us that one of his servants should conduct us to the palace, the gardens, the baths, and last of all, though most the object of our curiosity, to the source of the DANUBE....